What is sentence stress? How does it change the meaning of a sentence? In this video, I will teach you how saying a word louder and longer in a sentence can change the sentence’s meaning. Many English learners don’t listen for sentence stress and as a result, they don’t fully understand what someone is saying. I will teach you how to recognize sentence stress and how it can change meaning. Then we will practice listening to sentences with different word stress and examine their meanings together. I’ll share many examples so you’ll be able to hear how native speakers use sentence stress, and how you can do it too! At the end of this video, you can practice more with our quiz.

Test your understanding of this English lesson

Test your understanding of the English lesson by answering these questions. You will get the answers and your score at the end of the quiz.

In English, when we stress something, it means _______________________.

we say it quieterwe say it as fast as we canwe say it louder and longer

When we stress a word in a sentence, it can change or add new meaning to sentence.

truefalse

"Amy loves you."
If I stress the word "you", it likely means:

Amy loves you, but other people don't love you.Amy loves you. She doesn't love anybody else.Amy adores you. She has stronger feelings for you then just "like".

"I work hard."
If I stress the word "I", it most likely means:

Other people don't work hard, but I do.I'm not lazy. I work hard.I only work hard. I don't play hard.I work hard and play hard.

"Mike Tyson had 18 bathrooms in his mansion."
If I stress the word "had" in this sentence, it means:

Mike Tyson was the person who had 18 bathrooms, not someone else.Mike Tyson had 18 bathrooms, not bedrooms.Mike Tyson had 18 bathrooms, not 14 bathrooms.In the past, Mike Tyson had 18 bathrooms. Now he doesn't.

"Gowri loves cats."
If I stress the word "cats", it most likely means:

Although Gowri loves cats, her husband doesn't.Gowri loves cats, more than other animals.

"I should study English every day."
If I stress the word "should", it most likely means:

Other people don't have to study English every day, but I do.I know I should study English daily, but I don't.I should study English every day instead of every week.I should study English daily instead of a different subject.

101 Comments on “How SENTENCE STRESS changes meaning in English”

Hi everyone!, Can you please help me with something?
This sentence: “You mustn’t come here”, how to say this but in the past tense? Thank you!

Monday, September 4th 2017

Reply to this comment

Hello Katy
You didn’t have to come here or you haven’t had to come here .
Wether you want to use simple past or past perfect .
This is not an order but the answer your are looking for.
“Must” has no past participle so you must use “have to” for the past tenses
Hope this help

Hi, Adam. Thanks for your explanation about English. I would like if you could explain me about Hyphen. If you had already explained about it? Please share me the link.
I’m so glad that I can join this site.

this is a wonderful free english video website and it has so professional teachers. but the most of Chinese people cant watch it in youtube . what’s a pity ! fortunately, i can watch it by using VPN(which is a App for overing the wall), so l introduce this website to my friends who are learning english.

An interesting and amusing lesson because STRESS is important if you want to show the true meaning of a sentence. This video class was as a game with different players, every player might be one stressed word which has to choose its meaning, might be possible, as an example. Thanks a lot, teacher Emma, we have learned how we can explain different ideas inside the same sentence.

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Learn English for free with 1183 video lessons by experienced native-speaker teachers. Classes cover English grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, IELTS, TOEFL, and more. Join millions of ESL students worldwide who are improving their English every day with engVid.

Learn English for free with 1183 video lessons by experienced native-speaker teachers. Classes cover English grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, IELTS, TOEFL, and more. Join millions of ESL students worldwide who are improving their English every day with engVid.